On 2/23/2013 4:01 AM, David Bailey wrote:> On 22/02/2013 06:05, Richard Fateman wrote:>>>> Anyway, getting back to Mathematica and Lisp...>> Since Lisp programs tend to be short, there are fewer opportunities>> for bugs. Mathematica programs can be short too, but the irregular>> syntax makes them harder to read. See djmpark's comment about FullForm>> below. Lisp is like FullForm all the time.>>>> Yes Lisp is rather like FullForm - but who in their right mind would> write all their Mathematica code in FullForm!>> The beauty of FullForm, is that you can render an expression into this> form to resolve any misconceptions you may have about operator> precedences etc.>It means that for many people the misconceptions that they have aboutprecedences are never revealed to them because they don't use FullForm,and their programs are buggy. There are hosts of arbitrary precedencesamong // /. /; _ _? .... that ordinary mathematics does not have, sothe ordinary math-familiar occasional programmer has no solid clue.For example, do you know offhand if Pi x // Sin is Sin[Pi*x] or Pi*Sin[x] ? Do you realize that if you type Sin Pi x you see as a result, Pi Sin x. so it seems that Mathematica believes sin(pi*x) = pi*sin(x).

> Since practically nobody writes all their Mathematica code in FullForm,> it follows, does it not, that they must find Mathematica code> significantly (I would say massively) more readable than Lisp!

How do you know this? Do you have a survey? Just curious how you can say this. Makingup statistics is easy. Even with poll data it is sometimes hardto draw conclusions. For example,

46% of Americans belief that God created humans in their presentform within the last 10,000 years.